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Talk:Comentarii de Bello Populi
I am just at the right point of tired for this to actually make sense to me. So. *C1 **It's interesting that there's an implication that the illithids had more than one potentate in the guildhome system. I did not know this (though maybe it is something known in character, I'd assumed there was just Xoth). **It's an odd place to start, with the contents of an unknown letter going to be read to the Senate. I'm still trying to work out the intended audience of the pamphlet. As I think I said somewhere else, it's not really the sort of thing that seems likely to energize the populace given its removed tone. You'd have to be more educated to be able to comprehend it -- hell, to be able to read in the first place -- and it gives his skewed account of how the war started. I find it hard to believe that anyone wouldn't notice the bias, so it's hard to believe people would take this at face value. **In any case, I wonder if the letter alluded to is one that the intended audience would be expected to recognize. It could of course be an invention from whole cloth -- the idea that there'd be such a huge fight in the senate over whether or not to read a letter seems kind of absurd. I know politics can get kinda crazy when everyone has associations with everything, but it seems over the top to me. Unless there was something really important in the letter. ... Unless we're supposed to assume that he had something important in that letter, regardless of whether or not the letter really existed. But that's neither here nor there. **It is, however, worth noting that the subject of the whole matter is intentionally omitted. Something in Grax's letter, which may or may not have existed, was sufficiently controversial that this whole blowup happened over it. But he's not going to say what it was, which weakens his argument to anyone able to notice. I wonder if he's intentionally weakening his own argument here, or just not deigning to share that information. He could of course have invented a false justification, but did not choose to do so, instead making references to a letter. **All of this may be irrelevant if the audience for the pamphlet was indeed expected to know what Grax's letter was about. *C2 **No way did Malicor ever give a speech like that. Ever. I'm sorry, but Malicor? Okay, I mean, it's part of the writing style, but... seriously, it cracks me up just to imagine him saying that. **I think there's an implication here that the letter says Vargus wanted Grax to resign or something but instead Grax says no and wants to take it to a vote. There's no justification even given for Vargus's alleged position. It's hard to imagine that anyone this educated would actually buy the argument that Vargus wanted that because he's a big meanie. I wonder how much of this was actually true but the text won't tell us that. *C3 **Someone scared Malicor. Right. Malicor. Um. 'Kay. **Ah, so perhaps Vargus was just disturbed by Grax building an army. I would be too. Interesting that they gave the bit of justification already (the CotT assassination attempt) but didn't introduce more rationale for Grax having an army before they introduce that he has one and Vargus would rather he disband it. *C4 **Interesting that he brings in the Motherbrain here. I might be wrong, but my general impression is that even in Baldur where they were integrated into society, illithids weren't the most popular of species. Most people wouldn't necessarily hate the mother brain, but I'm not sure they'd be fond of her. Also, it's an affirmation of his identity as an illithid which clashes with his later reference to himself as a mindflayer. **And then they let his pals go to him. That probably isn't addressed because if they actually did go to him, then that denies him another reason to consider himself put upon. It's interesting that they would allow them to go to him, but maybe they might figure that sending people closer to his side would make him less likely to be pissed off? Standard caveat of this could all be fake applies, but if it's made up then it's a bit weird to introduce them as allowed to go to him and not have them be somehow put upon by the meanies in the Senate. *C5 **The reference to a second Avimeus here is interesting. I'm assuming the first Avimeus is the god one, which makes it a literary reference that I don't know how many people would get. **(Marcus) Fairlan's "gross misconduct during the Goneril Boarder (sic) incident". I am surprised this didn't jump out at me the first time because WAT. Unless there's something political we're totally missing here I can't think of anything other than Ethan's death for this to apply to. And I don't think that's common knowledge at all. Unless there was something totally different that we don't know about that he was referring to... **He gives the impression that he and Vargus were friends and now aren't. It's attractive rhetorically, I guess; friendships gone sour and all that. I wonder if there's any truth to it. By the timing they probably weren't at school together. **"unwilling that any person should bear an equal degree of dignity" is a weird phrase. It's been warped enough to make it inflammatory with the reference to "dignity" that it's hard to tell what it actually refers to. It might just be empty words alone. It could refer to wanting to be superior to him, but it's an awfully strange way of phrasing it. **This is also where Grax calls himself a mindflayer, which is just weird. **And apparently Vargus and Grax fought Barron Ganth together. That would contradict what Ganth said about the Rusted Feather being his bitches, or at least it'd add an interesting dimension to it. Also holy fuck how old is Grax anyway I mean really. **Interesting that Grax was throwing Marcus on the flames like that. I guess he could be working against the Saviors as well, despite his willingness to use Marcus. *C6 **"to deprecate their own danger" is a phrase I don't entirely understand. I mean, I can see how it could be read as "make the danger they're in seem less" but that still doesn't make sense in context. **So there was an illithid guildhome potentate other than Xoth. I wonder if he left with the others. **Here he says they haven't made a state of emergency since the city was on fire. Later I think he contradicts this. *C7 **I wonder why they were sending a guy to the underdark. To talk to the illithids, or to the drow? Probably the illithids. I'm not sure what they expected to get out of that. **The Barron Ganth thing is probably just there to be inflammatory, if not to draw attention to something. He's cited as a shared enemy, so reaching out friendship seems awfully abrupt. On the other hand they might actually have been in a better position diplomatically than Grax has been making it seem, so if this is verifiable fact then it might actually be less out of nowhere than it seems. **The bit about human and divine hasn't been showing up before now, and seems kind of out of place. I mean, it makes sense as propaganda, but even then it's sort of surprising. *C8 **So apparently Lady Elan restored something. It's hard to parse. If she restored "the intercession of the president of the senate" then that makes little sense in context, because Vargus is the president of the senate. If she'd somehow restored the senate then perhaps she did more than we thought? It's noteworthy, if nothing else. **He says "all times before when" the senate had done something that he says in C6 they've never done before. Now he's citing multiple occurrences. Depending on the reading this may refer to different things, I can't be entirely sure. **To elect their representatives diplomatically is an interesting thing for an illithid to bring up. I mean, it'd work when talking to members of other races whose natural government systems would be unfair. But the Motherbrain picked him and it's not like illithids are going to want to vote on things. I don't know, it's all very strange and suspicious to me. I messed with it a lot over the codex when I thought there was a code contained inside it that could be deciphered with numbers and number patterns. Now I'm not so sure. Honestly I still think there's a message here, because there are too many strange irregularities. But I'm not sure who the message is to, and I think it may be in the meaning rather than the exact text. There are references to Marcus and to Lady Elan. While it'd be understandable for him to smear Marcus if he's leading the Saviors, the fact he referred to that particular incident that we happen to know to be true is itself suspicious. He also refers to himself once as a mindflayer, though he otherwise uses "illithid". I don't know how easily anyone not an illithid would pick up on that, but I'd think it was pretty well known that that's not what we call ourselves. But he also affirms himself as an illithid by referring to the motherbrain. It's probably too much to think that this is a message to Ethan or to me because of these details. I'm not sure who would pick up on them and be able to take the next step of figuring out what the coded message is. I'm not sure what the information we're supposed to retrieve is. But I'm fairly sure there is something there beyond the propaganda. Chimegumi 08:49, March 12, 2010 (UTC) --- I've been reading articles for god knows how long and so I started automatically reading this as I would something that I'd expect to have a page-long list of references. I must admit, I was a bit disappointed when I came to my senses and realized that it didn't. However, here's my cool theory bro: Chapter One *If I'm following this crazy train correctly, the Potentates wanted a letter that was delivered to the Ruling Council read in the senate, to which Vargus (at least, Vargus is subsequently referred to as Highman in the next sentence, so I am assuming Vargus) went VETO, and the subject was dropped within one sentence in favor of other issues. **So, either the Ruling Council didn't react in the way that the illithid potentates had wanted, or they hadn't reacted at all. Either way, the potentates seem to have been trolling for a reaction, but were getting more "cool story bro" than "SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET", to their displeasure. **If you remove the first sentence about the letter, Chapter One is still intact and comprehensible, since the entire rest of it is on a different topic. The bit about the letter provides backstory about Grax and the illithid potentates in reference to the main topic of Vargus's discussion with the senate. *Vargus and Grax are treating the senate like an indecisive girlfriend. Possibly one or both of them are trying to scare the senate out of exercising whatever power they had to tell Vargus and Grax to stop having bitchfights. Vargus was president of Baldur and Grax was president of the senate at this time, I believe. A spat between the two of them could get ugly if left unchecked. In fact, it did get pretty ugly. Chapter Two *Malicor is talking about conscripting and raising an army for the protection of the senate while they vote on this matter of the "regulation of the state", apparently from whatever forces Grax and/or Vargus might command. (At the time, he was the leader of the army of the senate, as placed by Grax.) That's one hell of an electoral dispute. Hence, Franko's suggestion to send Grax and Vargus into time-out or something during these elections. Malicor might have just seen an opportunity to make his army bigger, though. *The only municipal-type elections that I see on the Baldur Republican Government page are those of senate members. I would not think a shift in the senate would "clarify" a spat between Grax and Vargus. Resolve, perhaps, but not clarify. I'm missing something. Chapter Three *BAWWWW POOR GRAX *Charilus is referred to as a member of the senate rather than the Ruling Council here. He was also on the senate roll in 1440. I thought he succeeded Lady Elan to both of her posts and got a step up from merely being part of the senate. (If he was the elven guildhome leader, he really should have been on the Ruling Council instead, yes? Does one encompass the other?) Then again, Ethan's memory, sing it with me now. Chapter Four *So Vargus had a party. Let's just hope he didn't hold an opponent's wife's hand. In a jar of acid. *This is where timing gets interesting. Pyotar and Brezcar were on hand for this discussion in Baldur City. Note that Baudin and his company met Pyotar and Brezcar in King's Reach about a week before the Ride of Nerull. Counting backwards: **They arrived in Baldur City on October 31 **They witnessed Grax's "assassination" in Landover on October 30 **They left King's Reach on October 28 **They pwned Pyotar during the night of October 27-October 28 **It took them most of the night of October 26 and the morning of October 27 to figure out "four flames ignite a pyre" **There was a five-way bitchfight in King's Reach on October 26. Tyro, Brezcar, Bookish, Marcus, Pyotar's personal army, and a summoned black dragon all put in appearances. Marcus dies. **They meet Ethan on October 25. Given his mode of travel, Marcus probably sent Ethan and Fennyn to King's Reach the morning of October 25 or maybe the night of October 24, but Fennyn didn't have darkvision and there is no reason to travel at night other than as an extra precaution against Ethan seeing where they were and losing it on an epic scale. **They arrive in King's Reach on October 24. They meet Tyro shortly before they get there and talk to Brezcar and Pyotar during that day. **They travel up from Marcus's estate with a shipment of weapons for Pyotar shortly before this, probably starting on October 22, given that they were taking caravans but were also going through unfamiliar territory. They see a black dragon flying overhead en route. *Pyotar and Brezcar said that talking to Grax would take six days. It doesn't say here that Vargus authorized this, and Chapter Six seems to indicate that this talk never happened. They were both back in King's Reach/Barron's Touch by October 24, and their attention was rapidly diverted from the senate to the issue of a handful of adventurers coming in to fuck up their shit. Chapter Five *I'm guessing the "defeat" refers to Grax exercising his power of intercession at one point. It would be interesting to figure out what that matter was all about. *"Mindflayer" may have been a device to signal to the reader that Vargus had distanced himself so far from Grax that he would address his once-comrade as, gasp, a mindflayer. *Marcus's motivations are also a little wacky here. He appeared to be cozying up to Vargus (who, in theory, disliked the power that Marcus had as a crime lord and would have been all over Marcus being indebted to him instead). While Vargus threw a party with just about anyone he could get his hands on, the phrase "gross misconduct" implies that Marcus had some political power that he abused during the Goneril Border Crisis. He might have just been untouchable because he was a crime lord, but if he was, he wouldn't be worried all of a sudden. *Marcus was playing both sides. While he was sucking up to Vargus, he was also sending weapons to Pyotar Umarov to effectively continue fucking with the Goneril border, thus perpetuating the Goneril Border Crisis, really. As he was still doing this in late October and could only have started working with Pyotar in 1439 at the earliest, this probably isn't the gross misconduct mentioned. **Assuming it isn't, what is? Why couldn't Marcus just crime lord his way out of it, if he had so much power? And why now? The Goneril Border Crisis was a long time ago. If someone was going to mess with him over that, they either waited a long damn time to do so or something had recently happened to bring Marcus's mystery dirty little secret to public enough attention that a vague reference would tell the reader all that they needed to know. *Marcus also ended up on Grax's side. Maybe Pyotar convinced him, or maybe Grax quietly offered him a sweet deal and/or covering up of whatever his "gross misconduct" had been. Chapter Six *I suspect this part took place sometime between October 20-October 23. That gives Grax's supporters a few days to realize that shit be fucked up and make plans, e.g. Pyotar and Brezcar's return to King's Reach and Marcus preparing a shipment of weapons to send to Pyotar. *Marcus may have sent Ethan to King's Reach in an attempt to hide him while all of this was going down. Alternately, it was an attempt to flat-out get rid of him: Ethan had been useful, but his presence may have suddenly become a huge threat to Marcus. There were several occasions upon which Ethan could have died from living memory issues, Marcus told him to go after a powerful magical item that everyone and their mother would kill to get, and Bookish was a dragon summoner. Hell, it's a minor miracle that Ethan didn't die. Fennyn, however, did. Marcus also put out a hit on Ethan shortly after this, and I totally do not buy that Marcus would think that Ethan killed him with a dragon. That, however, could just have been prompted by Marcus realizing that Ethan had run off with a group of adventurers whose patron was his business rival and thus Ethan was now a walking trade liability. Chapter Seven *This probably happened right after Baudin and co. left Baldur City, since things seemed normal to them upon their arrival but were starting to get fucked on their return. *This may have also been the tipping point that made Tyro rage enough to get involved. Given how protective he is of Tindersmarsh, he would throw an epic shitfit if someone walked into his town, conscripted half of his dudes, demanded money from him, and raided any temples that might be there. I also wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't Vargus who did that, but Grax. Chapter Eight *This sounds like the speech he made in Landover. *So the "intercession of the senate" is the power of the president of the senate to OMG VETO something that the president of Baldur/the Ruling Council wants to do. Given that Lady Elan restored that "a few years before", that had to have happened shortly before her death. I don't see Grax as the kind of guy who refers to something that happened decades ago as "a few years". This could put a new spin on Lady Elan's assassination, since that power was, by Grax's account, stripped after her death. He could be totally exaggerating here. I do think that this is the matter at stake between Vargus and Grax, though. *"eminences of the city were possessed by some terrible creature" okay someone with Knowledge: History has got to tell us this story; this looks epic. And probably unrelated. But epic. **Something that occurs to me is that this sentence is the kind of thing that Ethan would say. I parse it as completely deadpan, even though the latter part of it verges on absurdity. Its tone is quite different than the rest of this leaflet; if I didn't know better, I would say that it was almost joking. And it is at odds with something that he said earlier. *"...subdued all of King's Reach." Well, something certainly subdued it: there was acid in the fountains, and you know what, let's just recount all the different parties who were involved in the Battle of King's Reach, as we'll call it: **An army on the behalf of Pyotar Umarov, though he himself made no appearance **Brezcar and the orc community of Barron's Touch **Marcus Fairlan **Bookish and his pet dragon **Tyro and Royt Avampour **The locals of King's Reach **Baudin, Yolanda, Ulfgar, Jenka, and Yolanda's cousin **Ethan and Fennyn *At this time, it looks like all of those groups were, to at least some extent, on different sides. If anyone won the battle, it was the dragon; I'd call King's Reach pretty well subdued after that. *Grax does not mention the assassination attempt, even though he openly blamed that on Vargus and used it as the excuse to invade Baldur. *Marcus, Bookish, Royt, and Pyotar all probably returned in one way or another somewhere in here. A guess at the chain here would be: Pyotar wakes up and resurrects Marcus. Marcus resurrects Bookish. Marcus may have also resurrected Royt for a fee; Tyro may not have known or cared who Marcus was at that point. Marcus then recruits Royt for the revolution. While Pyotar would have been in a better position to place Royt with the navy, Marcus is the one who is rocking black dragons every which way, and Tyro probably would have ape escaped on Pyotar's face. Alternately, they were all resurrected by outside groups. Somehow. Maybe Brezcar was feeling charitable. Tyro could have just hoofed it back to Tindersmarsh and paid a local cleric, too. Stimulating the economy and all that. Chapter Nine *Grax flounces. I don't think the letter is necessarily related. It is never mentioned again; Vargus b& the topic in the second sentence of the leaflet and it never even makes it to the senate. Also, the Ruling Council doesn't make an appearance in this series of events. This leaflet demands a lot of context and a high level of understanding of Baldur politics and society. I wonder if its target audience was the former Ruling Council: their actions during this time are almost entirely left out, and they would know all of the backstory. I have no idea why he would want to court them like that, but it's a guess. For instance, that whole "...eminences of the city...possessed by some terrible creature" thing is the sort of phrase I'd expect to ring some bells with someone from that group and possibly even make them kind of smile in that oh, THAT kind of way. He could have stuck to natural disasters, or played up the harm that such a possession would have done to be clear that he was thinking about its tragic results, but...well, if I mentally rearrange it a bit, I come up with "...during the Civil War, or the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco, or that time that Godzilla stepped on the White House." Of course, it could be that I ought to be parsing it as "...during the Civil War, or the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco, or when we elected Cthulhu to president and his star-spawn walked among us as men." And even then, despite having spent four to eight years under the thrall of the Old Ones, I would probably still chuckle from the sheer ridiculousness. If there is a sekrit message here, I (to no one's surprise) cannot decode it. One thing that does puzzle me: if the lack of Lady Elan means that Grax lost power/didn't get the power that he had really wanted because she wasn't around to defend it, then that kind of takes the edge off of his motive for wanting her dead. Which means we're back to square one of "who would have wanted Lady Elan dead enough to point the Scarlet Brotherhood and a dragon at her"? Or, perhaps, Grax just didn't think his cunning plan all the way through. (Sure. Right. Yeah.) There is also the issue of Marcus not knowing who Pyotar is any more. When did that happen? Why did it happen? Deadelfwalking 05:59, March 18, 2010 (UTC) --- Still think there might be a code. Certain words are misspelled or spelled inconsistently: "Vagus" for "Vargus," "Boarder" for "Border", "Falcified" for "Falsified", "Mindflayer" instead of "Illithid" unless you go with Deadelfwalking's interpretation (which also makes a lot of sense, but if you're looking for flags indicating code...) and "imperitium" and "imperitum" in different places with the same meaning -- the internets are not being kind to my attempts to figure out which is correct in this circumstance. There's also a "for" that doesn't make sense to me but might just be his really weird writing pattern, and "Nerul" instead of "Nerull". The letters that are different between the two sets don't seem to make any words. I've been trying anagramming the word sets themselves: either "Vargus Boarder Falcified Mindflayer Imperit(i)um" or "Vargus Border Falsified Illithid Imperit(u)m". I can get a lot of cool stuff out of it sometimes ("bona fortuna filii", "elderbrain made a deal", "duplicitous," "has fallen rule", "baldur city fell", "dread pirate gauve" etc) but then there's a huge mess of letters because you actually have a lot of words there and it's not that easy to anagram something that freaking long. (That you can stretch "bona fortuna filii" out of it freaked me out a bit, but if the rest of the anagram is Celestial too I'm kind of screwed due to not speaking it IRL.) I'm trying to think of words that'd have a "v" in them since it's kind of rare, which is problematic. Gauve and Vecna are all I can come up with at this hour. ... this is the long way to say I haven't really figured anything out but look, the typos are canonical so I can overanalyze them. There's always the possibility that those words themselves are the message, but they don't make that much sense. Vargus border falsified illithid imperium? I mean, I guess you could interpret that, but it's not much of a secret message. Chimegumi 10:40, March 25, 2010 (UTC) I mean. It sounds more like a secret message than anything I've ever come up with. Deadelfwalking 16:19, March 25, 2010 (UTC) Oh, and a minor tangent: had Grax's revolution taken a little longer and news from King's Reach made it to Baldur City, Marcus might not have been as fucked as it seemed. He was playing both sides, or at least was playing up Vargus while in a position to fall in with Grax. I have no clear idea of Grax's opinion on his shenanigans both past and present, but Vargus would have been very much CRIME LORD I AM DISAPPOINT if he'd heard about Marcus supplying a quiet little war way up north. However, Marcus could have easily explained that one away by forcing Ethan and Baudin to take the fall for him. Unless Marcus was the failiest crime lord ever to fail, people wouldn't have trusted him, but they would have had to take his word over either of theirs. I mean, seriously: Marcus Fairlan vs. a sleazy foreign weapons dealer and an undead mouthy little drug dealer. Marcus Fairlan wins, hands down. Then again, he could just have been the failiest crime lord ever to fail. (He does kind of suck at rigging tournaments or something.) But if that were true, Vishnu and Coril Hainul would probably have eaten him alive long since. But in a way, it almost looks like Marcus would have benefited more from Vargus winning than from Grax. Sure, Vargus hated him and might have been able to hold whatever he did during the Goneril Border Crisis over his head. But if Vargus just wanted to ruin him with that, he'd have done it already. (Side conspiracy theory! Perhaps whatever Marcus did also incriminates Vargus WHOAAAA) We also don't know much about what happened during the Ride of Nerull. Marcus was freshly res'd and still looking a little squished. He may have been res'd by someone on Grax's side who knew that the assassination had been staged for a nice, dramatic turning point and the war was about to start, and so he was hanging around uneasily until the fireworks started. He may have been res'd by some magical mystical fairy, have teleported back into Baldur City or whatnot, and was about to cry into his paperwork when the fireworks started. We don't know if he went to Grax or if Grax came for him. ALL THIS AND MORE NEXT TIME ON CRAZY CONSPIRACY THEORIES Deadelfwalking 20:45, March 25, 2010 (UTC) This thing is like more than 40 characters long and I'm starting to wonder if it's too damn long to even be an anagram. "Saviors Gambit" also includes the g and the v, but then I can't do much with the rest. I've tried messing with the letters that are only in one but not the other and with converting things to hex and such but it hasn't worked. ... I'm still convinced the typos mean something, but I'm not sure I'm going about it the right way. xD;; Chimegumi 06:42, March 26, 2010 (UTC) In my holy-god-sleep-deprived-what-it's-three-AM state, it occurs to me that if the lack of Lady Elan meant that the president of the senate somehow lost the power of intercession due to lack of a champion or just everyone thinking it was a quaint old custom or whatnot, then that gives Grax the leverage he needs to strike at Vargus in a more permanent and debilitating manner. Had he the power of intercession, he could have stopped Vargus on one point. Without the power of intercession (and without the power in a somewhat questionable way, perhaps), he ended up outright overthrowing Vargus on the strength of it. Also, might those mistake-words be code words or keys to some other encryption? I know of a couple of coding methods -- none that we've ever seen in Eon, though -- that are structured around one word, so the code could be wildly different from missive to missive while the decoding method is the same. Deadelfwalking 09:47, March 28, 2010 (UTC) Rereading chapter 8, this seems to be the sequence of events: *Something is messed up with the intercession/senate *Lady Elan fixes it *Then Grax uses that power *And everyone gets pissed at him I think he's implying that he used the power of intercession right before the events of CBP, and this is why they're threatening to move the military against him. It still works with your theory -- he tried interceding, they didn't like it, so he goes all the way to overthrowing them, while claiming "but you made me do it, you weren't respecting me..." But I don't think Lady Elan's fall directly messed with his power of intercession -- or, at least, I don't think that's the point he's making. The mention of Lady Elan, if she was popular with his audience, could have just been a sympathy grab for all we know. I hadn't thought of that! They might well be. Well, we'll have them on hand to try if we find another code from Grax. I can almost read "Vargus border falsified illithid imperium" as an answer itself meaning something like "Vargus lied about the borders of Grax's imperium" but ... that's not far out of line with the rest of the document, so it makes no sense as something to encode. Your theory about the code words, or my previous idea that the letters somehow give another message if arranged/translated properly, still seem more plausible. Chimegumi 11:07, March 28, 2010 (UTC) So, uh. Given our new omgspoilers, I must venture one last omgconspiracytheorytangle. We have a pretty good idea that Lady Elan wanted to use Ethan as part of her massive diplomatic arsenal v. Ganth during the GBC, especially since these meetings were going to be private. A logical reason for Grax wanting Ethan killed is that he knew about Ethan's parentage and wanted him the hell out of the way. Hell, he might have even wanted that without knowing anything other than "it's like talking to Lady Elan but on cocaine." According to CdBP, shortly before the Revolution of 1441, Marcus was trying to get on Vargus's good side. As far as Ethan can tell, Marcus sent him to King's Reach in an attempt to sacrifice him (in a more general chess term than a to-a-deity term) in exchange for some unknown benefits. After that, the situation went from "okay if I have to trade you the deathlock I will" to "JUST KILL IT." ...it's probably for the best that y'all are going to the Southern Continent. Deadelfwalking 01:11, May 6, 2010 (UTC) ... Goddamn it Vargus. I'm not sure how Grax could've found out Ethan's parentage -- on the one hand, super-secret that even Ethan didn't know, on the other hand, Grax. Also, while it's Grax's leaflet and he could have just lied through his tentacles about anything he felt like, I find it interesting that he cites both Potentates as having fought for his letter to be read. One of those two is the Mother Brain. It does interest me that he's claiming she was on his side at least that far. If this is a political leaflet meant to get people's sympathy, I'd think most people would want to think he wasn't like all of the other illithids, since most people don't seem to have liked illithids much at all. I mean, "cautious optimism" was the description of how the younger races treated them, but on the other hand you've got humans like Vargus who were racist fucks in general and became extremely popular. ... If this leaflet was written and given to Marcus to be found and read by Ashra, first of all wow that's a lot of effort to court the allegiance of someone who'd probably fall for "Come have tea with me in my dictatorship. I probably won't stab you in the face with ninth level sorcerer spells for coordinating my assassination", and second of all try harder I don't believe your bullshit. Also, spelling. Chimegumi 01:54, May 6, 2010 (UTC) 0-1 2-92 5-46 5-135 5-163 6-79 ... I really hope this is just a coincidence, but those numbers sound a lot like the warehouse puzzle. They don't, however, sound like the numbers Fab D got, because I remember most of them for the first while were between 1 and 26, since I tried to translate it into letters and most of the time I could. Anyway I hope I'm wrong because fuck everything it took me too long to solve it if that's the case. I'll try other things when I'm done raeging over this. >_< Chimegumi 01:33, May 16, 2010 (UTC)